mardi 23 novembre 2010

Here is one reaction and part of another of a Joe Hargrave, known from blogosphere and from my other blog HGL's FB Writings. With my answers to it. He is of course welcome to continue the debate in comments section over here too.

Joe Hargrave:

Does everyone need to use that same piece of music for their videos?

It ought to be considered that it was the weakness and ineptitude of these monarchies that proved so tempting and easy a target for the Jacobins and Bolsheviks and the others. The American experience shows that the end of monarchy isn't necessarily a terrible thing.

... You still have the freedom to worship in this country, to own a business, to make a life for yourself. My great grandparents fled the Ottoman Empire, where their Christian ancestors had been oppressed for over a thousand years. ...

"The American experience shows that the end of monarchy isn't necessarily a terrible thing."

But the beginning of American Monarchy was George Washington. To lots of people George III had been King in name only (kino, reminding us of that recent political animal rino), whereas George Washington was a real monarch. As Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan: men who have shaped history by personal determination, on the leading one-man office of the state.

The "end of monarchy" in US as in end of colonial dependence on British monarchy proves as much and as little as the "end of republic" in Morocco as in end of colonial dependence on III or IV or V French Republic. The "British"1 monarchy was ended once in "Britain"1, by a man named Oliver Cromwell.

"Does everyone need to use that same piece of music for their videos?"

It is the politically correct piece of music for death camp pictures. I heard it I think (though that might be a false memory) in school way before the youtube era. Thus it is a reference.

It is however also a bad block on the upload, the "slow" upload on this computer - it is a public library! - stops the video time after time. Probably due to this piece of music.

"You still have the freedom to worship in this country, to own a business, to make a life for yourself. My great grandparents fled the Ottoman Empire, where their Christian ancestors had been oppressed for over a thousand years."

I sympathise with your hope of giving Muslims the freedom a Muslim régime would not give your forefathers. Without loosing our freedom as Christians. But I do not quite count on it. Switzerland has banned new minarets. France has banned the complete veil known as burqah. For my part I think Switzerland - at least if it had gone one step further and banned new mosques - had been both strategically more correct and also less intrusive into private life. Either way, France has ten times more Muslims per capita than US, Moslems are more omnipresent here, and people are getting a feeling that if not checked it is them that will check us.

If you like the religious freedom of US, remember it began in Pennsylvania, and that at first it was in practise only about Christian diverse sects, Jews and Freethinkers (whether you class Quakers as Christians or as Freethinkers). Remember also that it started by Royal Privilege from King Charles II. Only way this secret Catholic could get Catholics some religious freedom was by handing it to very left wing protestant sects at same time. Quakers (actually pretty close to nearly Catholic Spanish Alumbrados in a way) were less agressively anti-Catholic than Puritans or even Baptists, which is why religious freedom stems from Philadelphia rather than Plymouth Rock.

"freedom ... to own a business, to make a life for yourself. My great grandparents fled the Ottoman Empire"

Might explain your foible for laissez-faire capitalism. In Ottoman Empire the freedom to own a business equalled the freedom to run it any way you like. As it was in England from Reformation and in English colonies from start.

In France before Revolution it implied usually but far from always a contract with a corporation called jurande, according to which you were sworn to keep certain prices, certain wages for the journeymen ("journey"=French "journée"=here="day's work" rather than "day's march"), certain quality, a certain number of apprentices (who were children between 7 and 14, thus schoolboy age, and can be seen as having thus compulsorily lowered productivity), and of course no use of labour-saving machines the other master craftsmen(=employers,businessmen) did not use. It also implied Christian religion, caring for the dead both by burial and by prayers, caring for the old and diseased. Which implied usually that the state did not have to care for them.

Far from always means, that like in France before the Jews were expelled, some lines of business (for Jews never legally limited to only usurious money-lending) could locally be in other hands than that of the jurande. Even afterwards, a free-master not belonging to a jurande might get an exception if he were better serving the public and la jurande not as good as it should. As about France, so the Germanies, especially Catholic parts (Bavarian beer regulation is famous) or Spain./HGL

1"British"=English AND Scottish AND Irish, before United Kingdoms were united in any other union than having same monarch. Dito for "Britain".

8 commentaires:

If your claim is that the US never existed under a monarchy, then it doesn't really change much - then it is just proof that a country doesn't need a monarchy at all to be prosperous, peaceful and free. Either way you slice it, monarchy isn't responsible for what we had before communist subversives began wrecking it from the inside.

"I sympathise with your hope of giving Muslims the freedom a Muslim régime would not give your forefathers."

Well, it is not a hope - it is a fact here, that they have that freedom. Unfortunately some of them don't appreciate it very much. They demand special privileges and freedoms, just like the homosexuals. They take full advantage of the weakness and anti-Western hatred of the radical left against conservatives, nationalists, and Christians. The radical left thinks it will emerge victorious over its bourgeois enemy, but they forget that Muslims hate atheism and feminism more than they do nationalism and Christianity.

The Muslims are putting their weight behind one side of the great cultural and political divide in the West - on the side of social democracy against liberal democracy. Once they've crushed liberal democracy, they will then mop up the pathetic weaklings on the left who helped them against the right, and establish their caliphate.

"Only way this secret Catholic could get Catholics some religious freedom was by handing it to very left wing protestant sects at same time."

Well, it would have been interesting to see what may have happened in Maryland, where the Religious Toleration Act was passed in 1649. Maryland was a colony of Catholic refugees from Britain.

I say "may have" because the act was null and void once the English Civil War broke out. The Protestant colonists attacked and suppressed the Catholic colonists, who didn't get their liberties back until after the American Revolution. Still, I find it fascinating that the first legislative attempt at religious tolerance in America was spearheaded by Catholics.

"Might explain your foible for laissez-faire capitalism."

Foible? Because no legitimate, rational argument is possible, right?

To me, laissez-faire does not mean saying yes to corporate evil, but no to government interventions that support and subsidize that evil and harm the common good. To have anything more than laissez-faire in practice is to ultimately grant special privileges to the few at the expense of the many, and to store up fiscal burdens on the government that will eventually lead to ruin.

People hate laissez-faire because it sounds like individualism. But I reject individualism as a way of life. I think statism is the main cause of individualism, because it creates in everyone's minds an expectation that the state will take care of that poor man you see on the street. It will find him a job, heal his illness, pay for his rent, put his children through school, etc. I think laissez-faire would reinforce the value of family and friends in a number of important ways.

To start with, not one but two corrections in your terminological set-up.

1) US has had a monarchy from the start. It is called Presidency. Is monarchic palace is known as the White House, it is in a city named after your first monarch, George Washington, who, unlike what George III was once the war with France was over, was not a "king in name only".

2) Laissez-faire capitalism is not one alternative where the welfare state is the other. Laissez faire means the state does not protect the businesses that are against each other. Welfare state means the state taxes both the businesses and their employees to pay a dole to the guys who got either out of business or out of job by the operation of laissez-faire capitalism. They are two steps of one process. And of one that gives no or only small freedoms to the small business owner.

The men in "Responsible Rich" got their bilions of dollars by laissez-faire capitalism. In the Roman Empire they might have earned less, since Diocletian carefully graded work in 19 classes of different remuneration. This was kept up by Constantine and Theodosius. And continued in the jurandes up to English Reformation or French Revolution or Spain 1820 and so forth. There, they would not have been paupers, necessarily, but they had had no expectation of such riches (and we have them in Europe too).

The same men in "Responsible Rich" advocated the keeping up of Inheritance Duty to Bush Jr. It was kept up. It is financing welfare state type measures. In Rome there was a welfare state type measure about wheat, but your house you usually owned even as a pauper, even if it was a hut. In US or Europe now? No. Hence aggravated need for welfare measures.

By contrast, the need for wheat distribution actually lowered during what is now Middle Ages, indeed so much that the measure was forgotten. St Genevieve in her youth was probably distributing wheat to paupers, who had to line up. By the time of St Joan of Arc, people had come to think of such herding as somthing done to sheep, not to men. St Genevieve was no longer active in the office of her father who was decurion, but she was - like St Joan of Arc - a shepherd.

Was this because the Middle Ages had a laissez-faire capitalism? No. Certain types of gain were prohibited, one was prohibited to Christians. No one was allowed to sell cheaper because paying ones labor poorer than all the other businessmen, only Jews were allowed to take interest on money loans.

Interesting enough, the laissez-faire exception in "favour" of Jews was, in a way, in favour of a Jewish welfare state within the ghetto. A rich Jew was rich to give money to poor Jews, not in secret but before all, discussing with other non-poor Jews which poor Jew ought to be given an extra task in order to better his situation and so on.

‎"Well, it is not a hope - it is a fact here, that they have that freedom. Unfortunately some of them don't appreciate it very much. They demand special privileges and freedoms, just like the homosexuals."

In a way yes.

But remember: they are not asking for bigamy as homos are asking for gay marriage.

They are asking to keep the freedoms to dress as they seem fit (Sikhs in Britain have real privileges, about turbans in uniform and daggers where men are supposed to lack weapons - but ok, keeping a dagger used to be a freedom for Christians too even here), and the freedom to build prayer houses of their religion.

People who accuse them of demanding "special privileges" usually mean that they want girls to marry young - as they did even earlier among us - or boys to be taught Qoran and Qoranic Arabic: as Catholic Christians used to be taught the Bible and Latin. Or childrens' dole for ten children when in fact they do have ten children rather than for two as people having two children ask for the childrens' dole for two children.

Sometimes it is also about the Cantine, yes, I agree if parents want children to eat Hallal lunch, they can pack the Hallal lunch for them. But in some places packing a lunch is something parents are not allowed to do, school lunch being compulsory. That includes Sweden.

I am more seriously worried about two things: a) the everyday ingerence of adapted, Western style, Muslims in social and political matters, as well as French journalism, b) each Mosque being, in case of war, a rally point that makes expulsion hard. By contrast, veils would rather help identifying the ones to expulse.

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